


Missing

by The_Lionheart



Category: Gravity Falls
Genre: False Identity, Filbrick Pines Is A Jerk, Identity Issues, Loss of Teeth, Minor Carla McCorkle/Grunkle Stan | Stanley "Stanford" Pines, Odontophobia, Stangst, Suicidal Thoughts, Suicide Attempt, Teeth, Well this got dark, brought to you by: why does Stan need dentures but Ford doesn't
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-15
Updated: 2016-08-15
Packaged: 2018-08-08 15:14:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,103
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7762774
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/The_Lionheart/pseuds/The_Lionheart
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>So my kid Ron Swanson'd his wiggly tooth out the other day and it got me thinking about FUCKING SADNESS WITH STAN'S TEETH. Because why does Stan need dentures when Ford doesn't?! Augh.</p>
<p>This was intended to be slightly cute/mostly horrifying and kinda gross but it turned out to be fucking sad backstory word vomit.</p>
    </blockquote>





	Missing

**Author's Note:**

> So my kid Ron Swanson'd his wiggly tooth out the other day and it got me thinking about FUCKING SADNESS WITH STAN'S TEETH. Because why does Stan need dentures when Ford doesn't?! Augh.
> 
> This was intended to be slightly cute/mostly horrifying and kinda gross but it turned out to be fucking sad backstory word vomit.

_one_

Stanley Pines isn't good for much, never has been, but he's eighteen and he's been boxing for a decade. Well... almost eighteen. His birthday's a month off. That's practically technically eighteen. He's still in Glass Shard Beach, because Carla lives here, and she still talks to him, buys him a burger and fries at the Juke Joint every night with the money she makes serving snacks at the drive-in, never says anything about the fact that he wolfs it down like it's the only thing he's eaten that day. (It usually is.) She doesn't pester him if she asks questions he doesn't want to answer, like _where's he stayin_ or _how come ford won't talk to her_ or _stan can you please tell me what's wrong_ or nothin'.

Anyway, he's been boxing most of his life and he's finally got a guy down at the pier to talk to him about a fight. Winner gets two hundred bucks, loser gets fifty, so either way Stan's gonna come out ahead on this. Even better: the promoter pulls Stan aside before the fight, sweating and nervous and trying desperately not to look as young as he is, and tells him that he's supposed to lose. That means yeah, if he takes his hits he gets beat up a little, gets his fifty bucks, but he'll get another fifty bucks and he'll have a guaranteed fight, once a week. A hundred bucks and a guaranteed fifty a week sounds pretty fuckin' swell to Stan, who is currently living off an income of exactly zero.

Stan steps into the ring and he's been in dozens of fights before but this time is different, because it's for real, because he's fighting a hardass adult, because his Pops isn't watching-

-Stan almost trips over his shoes, because even blurry coz he doesn't have glasses anymore (because Pops hadn't packed them into the duffel bag he threw at Stan's feet two weeks ago) he recognizes the shape of his father's face, hat-glasses-mustache, Stan's nose and Ford's chin. Pops is watching. _Pops is watching_.

You win the fights Pops bothers to watch. You don't waste that man's time with losing.

The next few minutes are a solid blur of adrenaline and blood and action, and everything grinds to a halt when the announcer roughly raises Stan's arm over his head and declares him the winner. Stan's distantly aware that this isn't what was supposed to happen, but he doesn't care, because _Pops saw him win_ , Pops-

-is... is turning away. Is walking out. Isn't acknowledging Stan's goofy smile or his stupid waving or...

Stan lets the promoter corner him in the locker room, too dazed to ask for his money.

"What the fuck were you thinking, you piece of shit?" The promoter's a scrawny little thing and if he wanted to hit Stan he'd, he'd probably let him, because  this was the only thing Stan's supposed to be good at and if it isn't anything to Pops maybe it doesn't matter to anybody.

"Answer me, you little asshole! You just cost me a couple grand, punk!"

Stan flinches. _Potential millions_.

"I-I'm sorry. I didn't mean to, i-it was an accident. My Pops was watching," he says in a tiny voice, looking down. He doesn't see the hard expression on the promoter's face soften into something almost like understanding, and when the man puts a hand on his shoulder he flinches again, he can't help it.

"Alright, kid, I get it, you didn't want to disappoint your old man by losin' your first real fight," the promoter says, and his tone is resigned. "But you fucked yourself over now, you know that right?"

Stan nods numbly. Story of his life.

"So here's what's gonna happen. I'm gonna have my guy here," gesturing to the blocky, meaty fella next to him, "hit you a couple times, make it look like you got what you deserve, alright? And you're gonna take your two hundred and you're not gonna fight in New Jersey ever again, you got it?"

"Thank you," Stan says, sniffling despite himself.

"Jesus Christ, kid, don't thank me," the man says, sounding pained. Stan looks up in time for the enforcer to put a fist into his mouth, sending him sprawling. Stan coughs and spits out blood and three pointy little shards of white, which confuses the hell out of him before his tongue gingerly probes the new, jagged hole where a tooth should have been, right behind his top fang. ( _Canine_ , Ford's voice in his head supplies, and he ignores it.)

Stan takes his two hundred dollars and it's fine he can't fight anymore, because he uses some of the money to buy himself a metal detector, and that's easily the smartest thing he's ever done because he's bound to find local treasure, enough to get himself really started. He tries to buy Carla dinner at the Juke Joint, but she refuses. What a gal. It doesn't occur to him to get his broken tooth checked out- sure, it hurts kind of all the time, but he can do okay as long as he remembers not to bite down on that side. After a while he notices a funny taste in his mouth- not funny haha, funny like he wouldn't expect to smell something that kinda reeks like the dumpster behind the butcher's- but he gets used to that pretty fast, too.

_two_

Only Carla spends less and less time talking to Stan. It's only a week til his birthday and instead of making plans to go do something she's actively avoiding him. She's stopped buying him food ever since he got that boxing money, so it can't be that she's mad and feels like she owes him for that, can it? Stan worries, unsure if that really is the case, unsure if he should have been keeping track so he could pay her back. He combs the beach looking for treasure. Or jewelry. Or lost wallets, he's not picky.

He's not a failure yet. It just hasn't... it just hasn't paid off yet, that's all. Stanford woulda taken years to get his, uh, millions, so it makes sense Stanley is gonna take at least a few weeks, right? He can still come home. (He doesn't wake up confused in the backseat of the El Diablo anymore.)

At least he has Carla to talk to. If it wasn't for her he might as well not exist to anybody else. (She won't kiss him anymore, ever since the fight, but when they dance she smiles at him and it's still something.)

He really hopes he makes some money soon. He would have thought two hundred bucks would have lasted him longer, but between the metal detector and gas for the car and eating at the Juke Joint every night it's dwindling fast.

Only Carla's chatting up that New-Age twenty-something nerd with the guitar when Stan gets there, and she's laughing and leaning in to something he says. Only she doesn't come over when she spots Stan, just turns back to whatever that asshole (Thistle Downe, he remembers dully) is saying. Only it clicks into place when Thistle (what a stupid name, what a phony) bends towards Carla and plants a kiss over her mouth.

Stan leaves. He still hungry but if he eats anything he'll throw up, and he can't afford to lose that money. He spends the rest of the night in the back of the car, his knees to his chest. He saw wrong. That's obviously what happened. He was tired and lightheaded from walking the beach all day in the sun and not eating anything, he can't remember if he drank any water today, his tooth is hurting, she went in there talking to that creepy asshole who's ten years older than Stan and Stan is stupid so he thought he saw something he didn't see. Obviously. It's obvious. Carla wouldn't do that to him.

(Without Ford and Shermie and Ma, Carla's all he's got left. If she doesn't love him nobody does.)

Stan wakes up to the sun shining through the open backseat windows, confused because he doesn't remember going to sleep, and digs around in his car until he finds half a bag of toffee peanuts, sticky and hard, and it hurts his teeth but he doesn't care, he just needs to eat something. He makes himself go to the public restrooms by the beach and he drinks handfuls of water out of the sink and he does feel a little better.

Today will be better.

He goes towards the Stan O'War and he finds a handful of bottlecaps and turns right back around when he realizes they're his and Ford's, from the last time they worked on the boat together.

The sun is setting before he realizes he's not going to find anything worth money today. He locks the metal detector in the trunk and heads to the Juke Joint. At least he can get something to eat with Carla.

Only Carla is wearing a pair of new-looking bell bottoms and she's on the arm of that phony hippy Thistle Down. Only... only... only Stan really is stupid. This guy Thistle gets money playing that stupid guitar. Stan doesn't even know how much money he owes Carla for all those times she bought him dinner. Thistle probably bought those jeans for Carla.

Stan doesn't really remember what happens next. Only... only Carla is the only person Stan has left. She wouldn't leave him in the dust like this. It's that idiot New Age guy's fault, that's what it is. He's controlling her, probably, only thing that makes sense, because Carla's the only person who cares about Stan, if she doesn't care about Stan then Pops is right and he really is good for noth- no, no, no, see, Carla does care and Carla wouldn't hurt him like this and it's all Thistle Fucking Downe's fault. And that's Thistle Fucking Downe's van, parked outside, taking up two spaces. _Fuck that van_.

Stan gets in. The keys are on the dash. Stan realizes the best thing to do right now, the only thing that makes any sense at all, is to drive this fucking van into the fucking ravine. Just crash this stupid thing and and and and-

He takes a deep breath. He takes another. ( _You think this is going to help?_ the Ford voice whispers. _Carla doesn't care. She won't start caring just because you're dead._ ) Stan's breath hitches in his chest.

Carla doesn't love him. Nobody loves him. He'll be eighteen in four days and nobody wants or needs him anymore. And he's been so easy to get rid of... for everybody... that maybe nobody ever did.

So.

Yeah.

Fuck this van.

(The wrecked van is impounded and Thistle Downe has to go pick it up in the morning. He finds a single bloody molar mixed in with the shattered glass under the seat. He throws it out.)

_three_

They stick Stan in the drunk tank overnight and tell him he's lucky to walk away from a wreck like that. The guard is sympathetic- everybody's had their heart broken, everybody's been a dumb teenager- and gives Stan a paper cup of cool water to sip until his stomach settles, goes out for a few minutes and comes back with an orange ice-pop on a little wooden stick.

"Eat this, the cold should help with the swelling," the guard says. Stan takes it and it's surprisingly good, tart and sticky sweet. "Do you have somebody you can call, kid?"

Stan hesitates too long, and the guard sighs.

"Tell you what, uh," the guard checks the drivers' license they found in Stan's pockets, "Stanley Pines, just relax over there, eat your snack, sit quiet for a little bit, and when you're feeling up to it you can make your phone call, okay?"

"Kay," Stan says quietly. He doesn't know why this guy is being so nice to him. In the morning the guard walks him over to the phone and Stan dials the only number he knows won't get picked up by his Pops.

"Madame Pinesario, genuine psychic," Ma's voice rings out. Stan tries to speak and he, he can't. His mother scoffs on the other end as the awkward silence grows and grows. "Victor Crampelter, is that you? If you don't stop calling I'm going to come over there myself and beat the snot outta-"

"Ma," Stan says, his voice strangled. "Ma, it's- it's me."

"Stanley," his mother breathes out. "Oh god, baby, how- how are you?"

"Not- not good," Stan admits, sniffling a little. "I'm, uh. I'm in jail."

" _Christ,_ Stanley! Why?!"

"I took Carla's new boyfriend's car, and I, uh, crashed it. In the ravine. On purpose," he tells her.

"Oh my god. Oh my god, baby," she gasps. (She's crying. He's hurt her. He's the worst.)

"I'm sorry, I know I'm a knucklehead, Ma, I'm-"

"Stanley for Chrissakes are you hurt?!"

"N-nah," Stan sniffles again. "I hit my face real hard on the window and I lost another tooth but it's mostly just bruises, Ma."

"What do you _mean_ , another tooth!? Stan- baby-"

"I-I'm supposed to ask if you can pay my b-bail, Ma," Stan says, knowing what the answer will be.

"Sweetheart... If I had the money, baby, if your father-" she breaks off in a sob. "Stanley, honey, I-"

"Don't cry, Ma," he pleads. "Please don't cry. I'm s-sorry, I shouldn'a called."

He hangs up before he can make her cry any more.

He pleads guilty to a 'disorderly person' offense and the judge takes pity on him, because instead of six months he gets six weeks in the county jail. He spends his eighteenth birthday in his new cell.

Two weeks before he's set to get out the pain in his teeth becomes unbearable. The good news is, there's a dentist school nearby that comes around and does the inmates' teeth a couple times a month. The bad news is that the broken tooth is infected and the molar behind it is, now, too. The dentist students end up pulling both, and Stan really doesn't think the coupla baby aspirins they gave him for the pain are helping.

_four and five_

So he gets out of jail and he gets in his car and the battery's dying on his metal detector but he has to try. He can't afford to buy another battery. He's got seven dollars to his name. (And the El Diablo but he's never selling her, ever.)

The metal detector breaks down, in an act of providence, because it breaks down right next to a sign on the boardwalk advertising a life of sales for intrepid young fellas like him. It's a little like the Avon lady, but for stuff people want like super-absorbent chamois towels and pitchforks and vacuum cleaners. So maybe Stan has to borrow money from the local Family to get started- they're the only people who give him a chance, and it's not like the Mob does only terrible things, maybe the money they give Stan to start up his business (and get a room at a boarding house with its own phone) came from something legitimate, like, um, construction.

(When the kids are a month shy of thirteen he omits this information. When they're a little older Dipper asks him how someone can be banned from a state, it doesn't work like that. Stan doesn't tell him that the mobster he borrowed money from is the same mobster who ran the fights in the beachside tourist towns in New Jersey, that the guy remembered the name "Stanley Pines" from having lost money on the bets placed on that first-and-last boxing match and that Stan would absolutely have been just another anonymous body fished out of the river if he hadn't left. Instead Stan tells him a mostly-true yarn about having his name banned from registering for a business and a mostly-false one about the IRS.)

He feels bad that he lost three teeth in a three month period, though, so he does try to keep his face out of trouble. Pennsylvania is pretty good, despite the fact that the Rip Off Bandage doesn't seem to have been tested whatsoever.

(Hal Forrester is from Idaho. Hal Forrester is a guy from flyover country, a guy you can trust. Hal Forrester is a good guy to know, a good guy to _be_ , but he is always a day late and a dollar short, and he ends up having to borrow money again, and you'd think by the time he's twenty Stan would know better than to borrow from the Mob but he really, really doesn't. So. Hal Forrester does end up going 'home' to Idaho for a while. Stan doesn't miss it when he leaves.)

He makes a mistake in Chicago, wearing the face and name of Stetson Pinefield. Stetson tries to be a businessman, he really does, but it's a bigger city than he's ever lived in before. He relies way too much on the kind of petty theft he needed to stay alive back east. He makes friends who like him for the way he takes up a lot of space and knows how to throw a punch, and they teach him how to steal cars and pick locks open. Jimmy teaches him how to ride a motorcycle before he ends up taking off for parts unknown. He's the only person in his little group of loveless 'buddies' with the upper body strength to use a grappling hook, which he likes enough to keep for years after the heist is over. He ends up roped into making 'deliveries' for someone, somebody strong enough to protect him from the trouble he's in back on the East Coast, and the money's good- he gets to travel, for one. He sees all of Illinois, ends up spending two months "generally enforcing" business in Seattle, flies out to London for a week and Japan for ten days and takes an insane amount of pictures that all get mailed anonymously to Ma, except he's in most of them so it's not all that anonymous. Stetson Pinefield hits Las Vegas a few times; Stetson Pinefield gets married to the first woman who spends any amount of time speaking to him after Carla, and when Marilyn turns up trying to steal the El Diablo it's Stetson Pinefield who gets divorced six hours later. None of _those_ pictures get sent home to Ma.

("Hey, did Mom ever give you a bunch of pictures of me in other countries?" Stan asks Ford, decades later. Turns out their father burned a lot of Mom's stuff when she died, and Ford didn't question it when he made the trip from Gravity Falls for the funeral. Grief makes people weird, he figures. Stan doesn't find out she's dead until he tries to call her and her line's been disconnected, but even then it isn't confirmed for him until he starts trying to sort through Ford's things in 1982.)

So it's Stetson Pinefield who ends up going to Columbia to pick up some product. The good news is, he gets picked up by the authorities before he actually has a chance to really do anything major, so he only gets five months in prison. The bad news is, five months in a Colombian prison is pretty fucking terrible. It's the place where a lot of firsts happen- first time he gets stabbed. First time he gets burned, five fat circles in a row that remind him of cigar smoke even when his memory is erased. First time he- nope, nope, nope, even before his memory is erased there are places Stan will not let himself go back to, so that's, that's not even, no. First time he has to piss and shit with people watching, though, and sadly it's not the last time either. First time he's learned another language.

First time a guy takes pliers to his mouth and expects him to give up information on his buddies, who he thinks made it out okay but he never does find out. The guards let him keep the teeth though, the two bottom ~~canines~~ fangs. (It's only been seven years but he's already forgetting what Ford sounds like- mostly, when he tries to imagine, Ford sounds like him. He's pretty sure Ford doesn't smoke a pack a day though, so that can't be right.)

_six_

Somehow Stetson Pinefield- no, no, Stan Pines, that's his- no, wait, it's Stetson- anyway, somehow Stetson Pinefield gets out of prison and gets sent back home to America and he lasts about a week before he starts feeling like if he stays another second in Chicago he'll do something fucking drastic. He gets his shit in order and he's not Stetson anymore, he's Andrew, and Andrew has been through some shit. Andrew ends up in Texas, running cons and not even pretending to be a legitimate businessman.

Stan does get Ford's phone number from Ma, the last time they talk, and sometimes he tries to call, but you know, it just... it doesn't work out, okay.

Stan doesn't get a chance to call Ma for a long, long time after that, because Andrew is crazy, might actually be insane. Andrew Alcatraz drinks and smokes and someone makes a mistake giving him coke. It's Andrew, not Stan, who spends a year in Texas prison and three months in a Mexican prison just over the border. It's Andrew, not Stan, who ends up sent to the loony bin mere days after he gets back to Waco. Somehow, telling the doctors there that it's the wrong him who did all that terrible stuff... that doesn't really help.

So somehow three years gets away from him, being Andrew. He doesn't remember... a whole lot. He knows they did stuff to him in the institution, he has weird scars he can't for the life of him explain, he left the institution suddenly, cripplingly terrified of heights over eight feet.

Oh, and he's missing another molar now. That's... that's fun.

He gets to New Mexico- just Stan, nobody else, he can't keep the names straight in his head anymore- and he's not sure how Rico gets back in touch with him, he's pretty sure Rico only knew him as Stetson. Maybe. He thinks.

(There's no more Ford voice telling him when he's fucking up. Just himself.)

Stan's even more of a fuckup there than he was in New Jersey. It only takes eleven months to get to where he is pretty sure he's going to end up a corpse in the desert thanks to Rico.

He gets a postcard in the mail and he's not even sure how Stanford got his address.

He feels a shiver of shame, on the drive up to Oregon. Thirty years old and missing six teeth. It's been twelve and a half years since he last laid eyes on Stanford.

He hopes Ford's doing okay.

_seven  and eight_

Ten years of living in Gravity Falls and 'hoping Ford's doing okay' is all he has, every other thought pushed aside. He does take better care of himself now, because... because Stanley Pines might just be some worthless bum who 'died' in a 'fiery auto crash' but Stanford "Mr. Mystery" Pines has a reputation, has to be presentable. That being said, it's over twenty years since the last time he definitely remembers seeing a dentist and it's one of those things he knows he should do but keeps putting off.

(There wasn't a funeral. Why would there have been? There wasn't a body. Pops apparently didn't tell Shermie for months, and when Shermie called Stan up screaming that nobody bothered to tell him that his long-lost missing baby brother was dead, it was already too late. A little flicker of fondness that he forgot he had comes back even though Shermie spends the better part of an hour cursing him out, thinking he's Ford. He hadn't thought anybody would miss Stanley.)

So when he finally  decides to just go for it and makes himself an appointment, the town dentist spends the better part of an hour cursing him out for letting things get so bad. He's a little appalled at what he's sure is unprofessional behavior, but the guy can't have known he'd done most of the damage over a decade ago. 

He doesn't really have anyone to really notice if he skips an appointment or two or three, though.

(Until Soos.)


End file.
